Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was referring to medical detox possibility at the hospitals. My understanding is that earlier on, during questioning on medical detoxification at the hospital, we agreed we could provide beds in the hospital; but to keep a bed vacant in hospitals all year long on standby for that would not be appropriate. So any bed in acute care can be used for an individual to detoxify.

I don’t think the health centres in the small communities would be set up for that, but they could possibly do it. With the right nursing staff in place, they could possibly do something like that if...

Yes, I do think it’s the responsibility of the board or the public administrator of the health authority to do a press release. The timing I guess is something that has to be sorted out. Obviously, it has caused some issue with the timing of the release. In the future when there are other CEOs that are being contemplated or hired in the various authorities, we can find a way added into the process to advise the MLAs, all MLAs or the Assembly. Usually that’s what we try to do. As I said, it’s just an unfortunate thing that had occurred. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The current process right now as it stands is that various health and social services authorities and the one agency is responsible for releasing information on hiring of the CEO for their authorities. Thank you.

What’s available are the contracts that we obtained or signed with southern institutions in Alberta and British Columbia. So if individuals are suffering from addictions, whether it be crack cocaine, prescription drugs, alcohol, marijuana, or anything else that they may be addicted to, there are options for them to go to the four southern treatment facilities that we have contracts with now. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister’s forum didn’t exactly advise us to close Nats’ejee K’eh. What it says was that we need to find alternatives for treatment such as on-the-land treatment, mobile treatment, treatment targeted for youth, so we’re moving in that direction. This also pertains to what was happening in Nats’ejee K’eh. The closure of Nats’ejee K’eh was largely to do with what was happening within Nats’ejee K’eh at the time of the closure, or the elimination of the contract. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I don’t have that information with me, but I do know that we have looked at other jurisdictions. We recognize that there are various ways that other jurisdictions have gone about renewing their health care or providing health care cards such as decision to go with a picture on the health care card and so on. We have looked at other jurisdictions. Specifically which jurisdictions we looked at and tried to follow, I don’t know which it was. I think we are continuing on with a system that we have developed ourselves. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, it is a standard process. It is a manual process. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the Member is correct; the action plan is put together by government, but a lot of the actions are carried out by NGOs that we fund. I have a document here. Yesterday I spoke about the 50 or so NGOs that the Department of Health and Social Services support directly under the disabilities that I think may have perhaps six different organizations that we support within the funding of those NGOs. Our funding some of the action plans were put out. I think there are only a couple of them that are considered to be something that they were not going to carry out. I can go back to the...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. The 2007 NWT Action Plan for Persons with Disabilities had almost 90 recommendations. Of those recommendations, 41 of those recommendations were completed and 38 of those recommendations are ongoing. Nine of those recommendations were considered incomplete for one reason or another.

I’ve received e-mails from the various MLAs. I would say under 20 e-mails indicating to us that there’s an issue with health care cards not coming on time, but we’ve set allowances for those individuals if they had applied for a health care card and by the time their birthday came around had not received health care, then we would cover them.

I guess, again, we need to make sure that people have coverage, health coverage, and that’s what we’re doing. Thank you.